Ole Ma's Ramblings...

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The cost of joy.

Mornings in the milking shed, watching the sun light up the mountains across the valley, and LadyBelle’s velvet body warming my hands—it seems like I’m living the perfect life. There’s a peaceful rhythm to it, the sound of milk hitting the pail, the way the sunlight filters through the milking shed. LadyBelle, our strong Jersey Angus, has always given so much—nurturing not just her own calves, but any that needed her. Now, in this season, she’s giving us fresh milk again, but this time without sharing it with a calf by her side.

Because, just 48 hours after his birth, we lost him.

He was lively, spunky, and full of promise. But in the chaos of the herd, wild with hormones, he was knocked around. Despite everything we did to save him, it wasn’t enough. Sitting there with him on the bathroom floor, his head resting on my lap as I tried to warm him, my heart turned cold. There’s nothing that cuts deeper than pouring your soul into a life, only to watch it slip away.

This loss, like so many others, pulls me in two directions. The joy of fresh milk in the morning is shadowed by the heartbreak of the empty stall where a calf should be. Farming has always been this way—joy and sorrow intertwined, constantly pulling at opposite corners of your heart.

LadyBelle, though, is still here, still giving, and her resilience reminds me of why we do this. She was the first calf born on our farm, and she’s carried us through so many seasons. Her milk flows as steadily as the grief we feel for her lost calf, and somehow, both coexist in this life we’ve chosen.

*“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”* (Psalm 30:5) It’s a promise that farming life seems to test constantly. We carry the heartache, but we also carry the joy—the morning light, the warm milk, the strength of a beloved cow who keeps going even when the burden is heavy.

We don’t know how much more our hearts can take, but for now, we find comfort in the small miracles—LadyBelle’s milk, the beauty of the mountains, and the quiet strength that sustains us, even through the hardest of losses.

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